


Here to See You Through

by yet_intrepid



Series: in our bedroom after the war [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Grades, Intrusive Thoughts, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Roommates, Sibling Love, school stress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 08:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13877307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: For a second Matt thinks the room is empty, so he swings the door all the way open with a deep breath of relief, letting his backpack slide down from his shoulders.Then he hears the crying.“Shit,” Matt says again, because he is so good at words. So very good at them. “Uh, Pidge?”“Fuck off,” says Pidge.





	Here to See You Through

Matt’s tired when he gets home. 

It’s past ten o’clock. He’s spent all day fighting with Garrison red tape about his and Shiro’s backpay, which somebody told them should’ve come through last month. There’s still nothing. Dad’s came through right away, for whatever reason, but Shiro and Matt are still left hanging. And they need that money. Six people in a tiny two-bedroom apartment is starting to wear at everybody. Honestly, it’s almost enough to make Matt change his mind and go back to coalition work. But he and Shiro made a deal, and there’s no way in hell he’s going to let up on it. Shiro doesn’t need any more responsibility. 

So Matt’s going to fight this fight instead. 

He shoves his key in the lock and wrenches the stubborn apartment door open. Immediately there’s a burst of noise: Lance and Hunk standing over the sink, yelling at each other in Spanish. 

Well, that screws over Matt’s plans to crash on the couch. 

Lance and Hunk ignore him as he comes in, continuing their argument. Matt doesn’t speak Spanish, but he’s pretty sure this is another kitchen argument. There’ve been so many in the past couple weeks, and nothing’s getting better. And yeah, Matt’s got a hand in that; he’s not great at picking up after himself. But it’s just exhausting, and getting anxious about another fight somehow backfires on him so that it’s even harder to pick up his shit.

Whatever, Matt thinks. He glances at the couch; Keith is curled up in a corner of it, covered with a blanket. He’s got his eyes closed, though Matt has no idea if he can actually sleep through this noise.

So the couch is out twice over, which just leaves the bedrooms. He goes for the one he usually sleeps in first, easing the door open. It creaks anyway.

“Shit,” Matt mutters. Beyond the door, Shiro is sound asleep on one of the twin mattresses--a rare enough thing that they all know not to disturb it. 

He eases the door back closed. If he has to, he can drive to Mom and Dad’s. It’s a good forty-five minutes away, but he could do it if he had to. Might be worth it to get some space.

But that seems like so much effort, so he checks the other door first.

Beyond it is the room that usually bunks Pidge, Lance, and Hunk, though nobody in this apartment really sticks to the same bed with anything that could be called regularity. For a second Matt thinks it’s empty, so he swings the door all the way open with a deep breath of relief, letting his backpack slide down from his shoulders.

Then he hears the crying.

“Shit,” Matt says again, because he is so good at words. So very good at them. “Uh, Pidge?”

“Fuck off,” says Pidge.

Matt sighs. “Sorry,” he says, though it’s more half-hearted than he intends. “Yeah, I’ll--I’ll go.”

He hefts his backpack up again and runs a hand through his hair, turning.

But then Pidge sits up, her disastrous hair sticking up above the covers she was buried under. “No, wait,” she says with a sniffle. “You, you can come in.”

Matt comes in.

“You can come all the way in,” Pidge corrects, as he stands there in the doorway. “And uh, shut the door? They’re so loud.”

“So loud,” Matt agrees. He shuts the door behind him as requested, then sets down his backpack and joins his sister on the bed. “Give me some blanket.”

Pidge grumbles under her breath, but scoots over enough that Matt can kick off his shoes and cover up. Then she dives for a roll of toilet paper and blows her nose noisily.

“Gross,” says Matt.

“You’re gross,” says Pidge. There’s no venom in it.

Matt rolls his eyes at her. “Your mom’s gross.”

“We have the same mom.” It’s an old conversation, but Matt’s happy to see that it makes Pidge’s mouth twitch towards a smile as she answers. “Hey Matt?”

“Yeah?” Matt asks. 

“I,” she starts. Then stops, hesitates. “I really hate being back in school. I mean, I want to be back in school because I want to actually get a doctorate or something, but this is--I want to do  _ cool  _ stuff. Not take speech classes and American history.”

Matt elbows her gently. “You’re too smart for this place,” he agrees. “Your classmates and teachers aren’t giving you trouble, are they?”

“No,” Pidge says. “But like, it’s not…”

A sob catches in her voice and Matt’s own throat aches with it, almost like their resemblance has gone so far that their emotions can’t tell whose body is whose. He puts his arm around her shoulders and she collapses against him, dripping tears and snot onto his hoodie.

“It’s not like that,” she gets out, between gasps for air. “Matt, I’m--I’m dumb.”

“Who told you that?” Matt demands. He squeezes her closer, forcibly shaping his anger into comfort. He’d kill for his sister. He  _ has  _ killed for her. And some days, it wouldn’t take much to get him to do it again.

Which is maybe a him problem, but Matt doesn’t like to think about it.

“Nobody told me,” Pidge hiccups. “But I, I had a speech in comm today, and it was so bad, Matt, I definitely got a B or maybe even a C and I can’t do it, I’m dumb, I’m only good at hacking and fighting anymore--”

“Hey,” Matt interrupts, gently as he can. “Hey, Pidgey, look at me. Look at me, okay?”

She looks at him, eyes flickering with anxiety.

“You aren’t dumb,” Matt says. “There is nothing about you that is dumb. Dumb is fake, and grades are fake, and even if you made Cs in every class you ever took, you’d still be my brilliant sister. Okay?”

She hides against his shoulder again and for a while they just sit. Matt lets her cry, runs war-callused fingers through her disastrous tangled hair. 

“I’m dumb,” she says again, when she can breathe enough to talk. “Matt, I don’t want to be dumb.”

“You aren’t,” he tells her. “And if other people want to say you are, well, we’ve got the universe’s most powerful warriors all living in this one dinky apartment, and we’ll fuck them up. Okay?”

Pidge laughs a little. “Okay,” she says, and then she hesitates again. “I--I know it’s silly that I care.”

“What?” Matt says.

“That I care about a comm class,” she clarifies. “You know. The universe is...it’s so much bigger than if I can make an A in public speaking. But sometimes I care anyway and I feel shitty about it because there are, you know, people with real problems? All of you guys have real problems and I’m just here freaking out because I froze up and freaked out in class and I, I know it’s silly. I know.”

Matt stares at her. “Are you saying you don’t have real problems?”

Pidge stares back, then ducks her head. “I mean,” she says. “Not like Shiro. Or you, even. Or, or anybody really. You’ve all got better reasons to freak out about things.”

Matt feels the anger clenching inside him again. “You spent four years fighting a war. Pidge, that’s bullshit. I’m sorry. No, actually, I’m not sorry. It’s bullshit. You’ve got every reason to freeze up and panic and struggle with stuff.”

Pidge doesn’t look at him, doesn’t say anything. Matt can feel her shoulders tensing under his touch and he wonders if she’s angry, too. If she’s angry at him, if he’s saying the wrong things.

She muffles a sob again, drawing her arms tight around her chest.

“Hey,” Matt says. “Pidge, hey.”

She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even look at him.

“You want to just cry it out?” he finally offers. “I can shut up. I’m better at shutting up than I used to be.”

Pidge shrugs. She lies down again, curled under a corner of blanket, and cries harder. Sighing, Matt leans back against the wall and keeps trying to tease tangles out of her hair. He’s tired. He doesn’t know what else to say. This is an entirely different kind of fight: keeping up morale when the victories are so tiny, and when the defeats weigh heavy precisely because they’re easy to dismiss as insignificant. It’s not the universe at stake anymore, and somehow that’s harder to bear.

“I freaked out,” Pidge says at last. “My prof in that class, she--she’s got this way of talking that just rubs me the wrong way, and I hate it because I don’t even know why it’s triggering me or what it reminds me of but every time she talks I’m so anxious and I was anxious anyway because of the speech and I just, Matt, I just got up there and freaked. I stood there for a whole thirty seconds without saying anything and then I had to pretend it was a Voltron Coalition speech in order to get myself to start and then I just, I just zoned out. I don’t even remember what I said.”

Matt swallows. His fingers snag on a tangle and he works at it gently, watching Pidge make faces when it tugs. “I’ve had those times,” he admits. “But Pidge, seriously, you’re smart as all hell, and I heard you practicing a ton. I bet all the right words just came out.”

“Really?” Pidge’s voice is small--skeptical and timid all at once. “I dunno. I still think I didn’t do good.”

“That’s because you’re your own worst critic,” Matt says. “Holt family legacy, right? And I’m pretty sure Shiro didn’t do you any good on that front, either.”

“Hey,” Pidge retorts. “Shiro’s really supportive.”

“Yeah, but he’s also a goddamn hypocrite,” Matt points out. “Not that I’m not, on occasion, but Shiro takes that whole own-worst-critic thing to unprecedented levels of bullshit.”

Pidge chuckles. “Fair,” she says, and takes in a deep breath. Matt mirrors her, his shoulders slumping as the tension fades out. They sit for another while, and then Matt shoves Pidge over a bit so he can lie on his back and stare at the ceiling. There’s glow-in-the-dark stars all over it, one of Lance’s dollar-store spending sprees. 

Speaking of Lance…

“Did they stop arguing?” Matt asks.

Pidge listens for a second. “Sounds like it.” 

They take another breath in unison, and this time Pidge notices and then somehow they’re both trying to extend the exhale as long as they can, some weird competitive instinct of siblinghood driving them to it.

And then they crack up. It feels good to laugh, Matt thinks, but it feels even better to hear Pidge laughing. 

“Fuck,” she says, interrupting her own words with the laughter. “Fuck, Matt, stop, I can’t breathe, my nose is all stuffy!”

“Gross,” says Matt.

Pidge raises her eyebrows. “You’re gross.”

“Your mom is gross.”

“We have the same mom.” Pidge blows her nose on her sleeve. “Speaking of mom, don’t tell her about this, okay? I don’t want her to worry.”

Matt sighs. “You sure?”

“Yeah.” Pidge flops back down on the bed. 

“Okay,” Matt says. He doesn’t like it, but Pidge spent four years fighting a war. She doesn’t need him going behind her back to try and take care of her.

No, he thinks, what she needs is just this: them sprawled on the bed together, elbowing for more space, forgetting just for a moment the war that seeped in through their skin. 


End file.
